from the ask-away dept

This month's Techdirt book club book is Copyfraud, by Jason Mazzone. If you missed them, we published some excerpts (part I and part II) earlier this month, and hopefully some of you have had a chance to dig into the full book. Over on our Step2 platform we're collecting questions and voting on them to send to Mazzone to kick off the discussion, which we'll have in a couple of weeks. You can, of course, also ask questions in the comments to this post, but we're using Step2 because it makes it much easier to track which questions get the most votes (and, if you have a login to Techdirt, it works there too, so you don't need to re-register or anything). We look forward to the discussion on this important aspect of copyright law that doesn't get nearly enough attention.

from the join-in dept

As we announced recently, we're now featuring and highlighting startups who want feedback on what they're working on over at our Step2 discussion platform. The latest startup to take part is Sprinklebit, an online investment/trading community that is looking for feedback on what you would like to see in an online investment community. There's already a good conversation going on at the discussion page.

Separately, we've already received a bunch of requests to take part in future Step2 Startup posts, but if you've got a startup and want to get feedback from the Techdirt/Insight Community, please send us a note (use the "Step2 Startups" option in the pulldown).

from the keep-it-going dept

We've been working to do more with our Step2 discussion platform lately, and today we're announcing Step2 Startups -- in which various startups reach out to the Techdirt community for feedback/thoughts/advice. Step2 has already been set up for people, creators, entrepreneurs and innovators, but now we're starting to specifically highlight interesting startups that are asking for feedback from the community. The first participant is the startup Snackr, "The Pandora for Audio News".

A little over a year ago I was blown away by Paul Ford's brilliant essay entitled The Web Is a Customer Service Medium. It inspired me to write a post about the key idea in the essay: that the killer app for the web is providing the answer to the "Why wasn't I consulted?" question -- simplified to WWIC. Since then I've spoken dozens of times about WWIC in the context of building communities and navigating digital challenges.

The key to building communities really is to focus on the WWIC question -- and that was a big part of our thinking when we set up Step2. The platform was initially focused on business models and ideas for content creators, but the plan has always been to expand it to cover more and more useful concepts. We'd noticed that our community has a lot of opinions and insights into various new online tools and services. Any time we mention anything on Techdirt, people get into pretty detailed and involved discussions, and we thought we should leverage that with Step2. At the same time, we get tons of requests from PR folks or startup entrepreneurs themselves (we definitely prefer to hear from entrepreneurs directly over their hired-gun PR people) hoping to get coverage on Techdirt. Doing straightup "this startup is launching today" stories isn't really our bread and butter -- unless it fits into a larger trend we're looking at, it just didn't seem to be of much value. Plus, there are dozens of blogs doing that kind of thing.

But what we could do is help startups get feedback and insights from our opinionated and thoughtful community. We could help make sure you folks "were consulted" on various interesting new tools and services. Hence Step2 Startups -- where we'll be highlighting various startups that request feedback and thoughts from the community here. Step2 is an open platform, so any company can just post their questions directly and seek feedback, but if you want to be featured on Techdirt as well, like Snackr here, we ask that you hit us up via the feedback form. If it's appropriate, we'll work with you to find an interesting question on which the community is likely to have thoughts.

from the giving-away-cash dept

As you may recall, over the last couple months we ran two separate contests, in which we are giving away $11,000 in $1,000 chunks. Today we're announcing all the winners. The first was our PSA contest, where we asked people to create short PSA videos about the impact of technology on creativity. For that one, congrats to Joshua Rodriguez, who made an entertaining video that actually lays out both the "pro" and "con" arguments for how infringement is impacting creativity:

Nicely done -- even if I don't personally agree with all of the arguments, that was kinda the point of the contest. Unlike NBC Universal's similar contest (which was officially put on by New York City), we didn't want to give people a preset talking point. We wanted people to be creative on their own, and Joshua did a great job.

The second contest was for submitting case studies on our new Step2 platform for helping people create "success models." Somewhat surprisingly, we didn't even get submissions in every category, so we're giving $1,000 each to the overall 10 best case studies that got submitted -- per user voting. Here's the list in order of user votes:

Married Man Sex Life: The Marketing Plan: Author Athol Kay discusses the marketing strategy for his book, and then goes on in the comments to give us play by play updates as he experiments and tries different pricing strategies.

from the case-study-contest dept

Along with our just announced brand new Step2 platform (a part of our larger Insight Community effort), we're thrilled to announce a case study contest! We're looking for detailed case studies of experiments that content creators have done, and how they worked out. And we've got $10,000 burning a hole in our pocket to give out to the best case studies.

You can click the link above for the official details, or you can look at the three examples we mentioned in the announcement post:

We want a lot more like that, and not just in the music space. We're looking for case studies from content creators in music, movies, books and video games and will award $1,000 to each of the top two vote getters who qualify in each of those categories. Separately, we're also looking for fan case studies of how artists in any of those fields connected with you. Again, the top two vote getters will get $1,000 each.

The kinds of case studies we'd love to see:

Done an interesting/different/unique promotion? Tell us about it and share the results in as much detail as possible

Tried an email marketing campaign? What worked and what didn't? Any key metrics?

Attempted crowdfunding? How did you set the rewards? What did people like/not like?

Used new or different platforms or technologies? What kind of results did you see? What could be improved?

Attempted something different -- like a house concert tour? ebook-only release? letting fans take part? releasing unfinished works? What worked, what didn't, what did you learn?

Experimented with "name your own price?" How did it work? What prices worked well? What efforts did you make to trigger certain price points?

Set up a tiered pricing model? How did you choose the tiers? What worked? What did you learn?

How are you connecting with fans? Facebook, Twitter, Podcasts? Google Plus? What works, what doesn't? What really seems to energize fans? What doesn't? Any empirical data that shows how your fans reacted?

Surprise us!

If you're a content creator in any of the qualifying categories, please consider taking part. Some creators are always afraid to share too many details of their "secret sauce," but many who have done so have found that the transparency itself leads to greater connection with fans and -- perhaps more importantly -- getting detailed info out there will help inspire others to do cool things too. Step2 is about learning and helping each other succeed in a rapidly changing world.

If you're not a content creator who qualifies, please consider entering the fan contest, but also alert your favorite content creators in the qualifying categories that they should enter!

We're looking forward to learning about all the great and interesting experiments, success stories and lessons learned.

from the join-in-the-fun dept

Today we're extremely excited to announce the launch of Step2, our discussion platform for helping creators, fans, techies, business folks and anyone else work together to help creators figure out ways to better succeed with their efforts.

It's been nearly three years since I first did my MidemNet presentation that discussed the idea of Connecting with Fans + a Reason to Buy = Business Model -- better known as CwF+RtB=$$$. Since that time, I've spent plenty of time writing, speaking, consulting and thinking about this concept and have tried to outline it in as much detail as possible. Still, I can't even begin to say how many times I've had content creators -- be they musicians, filmmakers, authors, software developers, photographers, poets, painters, etc. -- reach out and ask what should they do to better connect with fans? What should they do to come up with better reasons to buy? I've tried to help them whenever possible to the extent that I can, but each situation is unique. Nothing in CwF+RtB was supposed to about "here's the exact path to success." It was a set of principles, and each person/organization could apply it appropriately to their circumstance.

In thinking about this, we realized that what's really missing out there is a true community to help people figure this stuff out. There's really no great place for a content creator to ask people how can they better connect with a fan base. There's really no great place out there for an artist to compare different store hosting platforms to see which ones might serve their needs better. There's really no great place out there for someone to figure out just how should they set up this business model/online store/crowdfunding campaign. And there's no great place for fans to reach out and help the creators they love as well with these same sorts of questions.

At times, I know that's how many content creators feel about the range of opportunities that the digital age presents them. So, our Step2 platform is hopefully designed to help creators make those question marks in their own "Step 2" a bit more clear and useful.

So how can Step2 be used? Well, that's partly up to the community to decide! But here are some suggestions:

Content Creators:

Ask the community how to better succeed -- whether it's to better connect with fans or to come up with unique and compelling business model ideas.

Discuss challenges or choices you're facing and get feedback. What platforms make sense? Should you focus on touring or build a local fan base? Should you self-publish or try to get a publishing deal? Can you really crowdfund this movie? etc.

Share your experiences as a case study. To get feedback and to help others learn from and be inspired by your experiences. In a little while we'll be posting about a contest we're launching in conjunction with the Step2 launch, where we're offering up a total of $10,000 to people for sharing their case studies. For a few great examples of case studies, check out:

Share your own case studies as a fan. Show artists how it feels to have an artist treat you well, and highlight cool examples of artists that have connected with you. Inspire more artists.

Want to help out your favorite artist? Start a discussion about cool things they're already doing and encourage more people to check them out.

See someone you like who you think could do better? Make some suggestions about ways they could do even better.

See someone you like doing something you don't like? Maybe present some alternative ideas

Everyone:

This is a community project. Even if you don't know some of those participating, you'll be amazed at how gratifying it is to try to help people succeed with their work. While I haven't had time to help as many content creators as I would have liked, every time I'm able to spend some time helping artists, it's always been a very rewarding experience.

Help people recognize that there's a world of opportunity out there, and there are all sorts of great ways to embrace it and to succeed. Talking to folks who succeed today, you almost inevitably hear a variation on the theme that they saw someone else succeeding and were inspired to know that they could do that too.

To be clear: while we often talk about music, this is about all sorts of creators. Music, movies, videos, software, photographs, poetry, web pages, companies, blogs, magazines... whatever. Jump in and start discussing, sharing and spreading ideas.

Special Thanks!:

First off a special thanks to our awesome sponsors for this project, from whom you'll be hearing more as Step2 moves forward. TopSpin provides an amazing platform for content creators to connect with fans and give them a reason to buy. Its platform is used by big name artists like Eminem, Lady Gaga, the Beastie Boys and Paul McCartney, as well as tons of up and coming artists. And it's not just for music. They're powering sites for the likes of filmmaker Kevin Smith and are working with authors as well. We'll be seeing more details and case studies from folks associated with TopSpin in the near future. Then we have the Future of Music Coalition, who has been doing all sorts of wonderful things helping musicians deal with a changing market. Their latest project (again, which you'll be hearing more about) is the massive artist revenue streams project, in which they're gathering data from tons of musicians to better understand all revenue streams for artists these days. SongKick is an amazing new platform that is really doing cool things for the touring industry, and has some amazing insight into that important revenue stream for musicians, which we'll try to delve into on Step2. And last, but certainly not least, is Bandzoogle, a website platform for content creators that makes it easy for creators to build extremely powerful (and profitable) websites. As we recently noted, artists using Bandzoogle are making a lot of money, and we're looking forward to finding out more about how they do that.

Also, a special thanks to the crew here at Floor64 for the hard work in putting all this together and iterating on the original idea and turning it into a reality. Finally (and perhaps most importantly) an extra special thanks for the community of folks out there who have bandied about many of the ideas about how to connect with fans, and how to build cooler, better business models that inspired us to put together this platform.